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It’s hard to compete with the last two posts: sex and boobs are pretty much the most searched things in the internet (and rightfully so, I’m not contesting that :P). However I’ll try to bring something interesting today and no, this time I have a shorter post (I promise I won’t post 2 hours of music again haha).

Probably most of you have heard about subliminal messages in music, hidden meanings, unraveled when played backwards – mostly satanic stuff and whatever. I must tell you I’m pretty skeptical with those things, most of the times people extract meanings they want to hear, or that vaguely sound like reality (in the vein of misheard lyrics). Who hasn’t heard the backwards version of Stairway to Heaven and all that stuff about loving Satan?

If you really believe in subliminal messages here’s a real one (taken from the movie Little Nicky with the great Adam Sandler posing as one of Beelzebub’s sons):

(If you like hard rock/metal and you love to laugh, I definitely recommend watching this movie – even Ozzy appears! :P)

Ok, that one’s a spoof, I know.. In the early 80’s, Iron Maiden were also accused of satanism (with songs like The Number Of The Beast, I wonder why…). To show people that it was all a lie, they intentionally recorded a phrase backwards on their album Piece of Mind. When you hear the song properly, it doesn’t mean anything (except for the burp, that’s recognizable even backwards), but try playing it backwards! You’ll hear Nicko McBrain imitating the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin saying “What ho said the t’ing with the three ‘bonce’, do not meddle with things you don’t understand…”

I think you get my point: most of the times there’s nothing there to extract, when there is, it’s a joke!

Unless you’re Tool! Tool is a alternative/progressive metal band who use odd tempos, complex sounds and also incorporates visual experimentation on their videos (see Parabola and you’ll get what I mean). Someone once said that they’re “the thinking person’s metal band. Cerebral and visceral, soft and heavy, melodic and abrasive, tender and brutal, familiar and strange, western and eastern, beautiful and ugly, taut yet sprawling and epic, they are a tangle of contradictions.”

Their connection with this topic is because they do leave enigmas for the fans! Their song Lateralus is based on the Fibonacci sequence, both rhythmically and in the verses length. The first time Maynard sings is also at 1.618 minutes, which is the golden ratio, also related to the Fibonacci sequence. Do watch this video if you doubt me:

But that’s not the only thing. You probably have heard about hidden tracks in cds, no? Usually the album is advertised as having X songs and when you play it you notice there’s X+1 instead. Big deal! Tool also have a hidden track in their 10,000 days album, but it’s not a regular hidden track. You have to build it! If you take the song Wings For Marie (Part 1) and put it in front of Viginti Tres, you’ll see that together they have 11:17 minutes, which is exactly the duration of the song 10,000 days (Wings Part 2)! Furthermore, overlap them and they sync together! Isn’t that amazing? Here’s the total overlapped version of the 3 songs (notice the doubled riff at 9:14 – 9+14=23 – viginti tres in latin):

I’ll leave you appreciating the awesomeness that is Tool with this playlist (for the playlist of the post click here).